Kenosha Tribune & Telegraph

A Prayer for the Times.

I was pleased with your mode of interpreting God's purposes in sending us a succession of such Presidents as Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan; and what you said in Saturday's paper about the corresponding uses of snakes, toads and vermin in the grand economy of Providence, reminded me of a prayer which was made some years ago in Ohio under the following circumstances: In a village, which I need not name, there resided a family consisting of an old man by the name of Beaver, and his three sons, all of whom were hard pets, and who had often laughed to scorn the advice and entreaties of a pious though very eccentric minister, who resided in the same town. It happened one of the boys was bitten by a rattlesnake and was expected to die, when the minister was sent for in great haste. On his arrival he found the young man very penitent and anxious to be prayed with. The minister, calling on the family, kneeled down and prayed in this wise: "O Lord, we thank thee for rattlesnakes; we thank thee because a rattlesnake has bit Jim. We pray thee send a rattlesnake to bite John; send one to bite Sam; and, O Lord, send the biggest kind of a rattlesnake to bite the old man: for nothing but rattlesnakes will ever bring the Beaver family to repentance!"

You seem to think that nothing but "rattlesnakes of the biggest kind," like Buchanan, will bring the American people to repent and stop choosing such rulers. Evening Post.